Reside chat metrics assist you perceive your clients’ experiences and be certain that your staff feels assured and profitable of their responses.
Realizing what you are measuring and setting benchmarks in your objectives is important to solidifying and rising your assist technique throughout channels.
Listed here are the 14 stay chat metrics — damaged out into cumulative metrics, conversation-level metrics, and agent-level metrics — that we advocate monitoring.
It is a chapter in our Final Information to Reside Chat Assist. While you’re prepared, take a look at the opposite chapters:
Cumulative metrics
When measuring your stay chat efficiency, measure on the total, dialog, and particular person agent ranges. These cumulative metrics assist you perceive how your stay chat is performing total.
1. Complete quantity
Complete quantity is the full variety of chats that come by means of to your staff over a selected timeframe. It consists of missed and accomplished chats and must also reference any chat integrations.
Whereas complete quantity is a superb metric to grasp what number of chats you may have total, extra granular metrics will inform a extra insightful story. Info that comes from reviewing the content material of the chats or the sorts of queries inside the conversations helps you perceive how the amount provides up.
For instance, should you discover you may have numerous chats round a particular matter, you could do nicely to create documentation or an FAQ addressing these questions and floor these as an alternative.
2. Chats per day
The chats per day metric breaks down the full quantity metric into what number of conversations through chat you acquired every day of your corporation week. It helps you handle staffing volumes and perceive when your clients or prospects are most energetic in your web site.
3. Accomplished chats
A minor breakdown of “complete quantity,” accomplished chats is the variety of conversations that your staff completed. Completion refers to being accepted by a chat assist consultant and marked as achieved by the consultant or the shopper.
If in case you have a big quantity in your complete quantity metric however solely a tiny proportion of them are accomplished chats, that means a spot inside your stay chat technique.
4. Missed chats
These are chat conversations that your staff didn’t settle for. Typically, because of this nobody was obtainable to take the chat when it got here by means of, so it was moved to a different channel. Nevertheless, there could also be different explanation why chats get missed.
In the event you discover that this quantity is getting excessive, it is a good suggestion to judge whether or not it’s essential to employees extra individuals or solely current your chat home windows at particular instances.
Ideally, your variety of missed chats could be zero. Missed chats are a misplaced alternative to interact along with your clients and may be a letdown to your clients reaching out through that channel.
If you cannot supply chat 100% of the time, take into account adopting a stay chat device that makes it straightforward to route clients to different channels. For instance, Assist Scout’s stay chat device, Beacon, is solely offered as an choice to your clients when somebody is accessible to simply accept that chat.
5. Conversion fee
Conversion fee can refer to 2 separate metrics. The primary one references the variety of gross sales out of your stay chat responses, and the second is the variety of web site guests that turn out to be chats.
Gross sales conversion
Chat does not simply need to be a cash sink, as some corporations take into account it. Many shoppers — roughly 38% — say that they’ve bought after having stay chat session.
When your staff can present in-the-moment help concerning presale inquiries, points inside the product, and even questions on the pricing web page, you could possibly find yourself changing extra leads and contributing on to your backside line.
To calculate your gross sales conversion charges, observe the full variety of guests who transformed versus the full variety of chats you had over the identical interval.
In the event you aren’t at present incentivizing reps to push gross sales, this will nonetheless be baseline metric to grasp. As an illustration, you could possibly additionally observe conversion round different enterprise objectives, like signing up for a e-newsletter or subscribing to your weblog.
Monitoring this metric is a superb approach to perceive how your staff performs when given a particular habits with every dialog, similar to recommending a product or one other name to motion.
Web site-to-chat conversion
Your advertising and marketing web site is likely one of the greatest methods so that you can seize leads in your gross sales staff. Implementing stay chat is a big alternative to set off personalised messages at crucial instances in the course of the buyer journey.
Proactive outreach on difficult pages or when a buyer has lingered in your web site longer than you’d anticipate might be a good way to information passive viewers into your funnel.
To trace this metric, determine the variety of customers who reply to passive outreach from both a chatbot or your chat assist staff. Serving to your clients in actual time cultivates a greater buyer and model expertise, and it’s even higher when you possibly can attain clients proactively.
6. Tags
The time period “tags” could make some assist professionals reflexively cringe a bit. Nevertheless, tags are extremely helpful. They offer you perception into the commonest points coming by means of to your assist staff and supply higher focus for coaching or fixes inside the product.
Use a tagging technique that enables your stay chat metrics to report on the place essentially the most urgent subjects are.
As an illustration, if 25% of your tickets are about transport instances, 45% are about your account administration web page, and the opposite 30% are about varied subjects, it would recommend that it’s essential to enhance the documentation or the expertise round transport instances and account administration.
Like tags on e mail conversations, stay chat tags are solely as useful as you make them. Attempt to hold your tag technique easy and simple to make use of to make sure you get the very best knowledge out of it. The simpler it’s to mess up a tag, the more severe your knowledge can be.
Dialog-level metrics
Whereas it is useful to have an overarching view of how chat is performing, it is equally useful to grasp how your stay chat is performing on the dialog degree. These will assist what methods it’s essential to enhance at a extra micro degree than these you have a look at cumulatively.
7. Wait time
To calculate this metric, common the time guests waited between initiating the stay chat and somebody accepting or being assigned the dialog. Generally, missed chats or chats that went on to e mail won’t rely towards this metric.
When your buyer sees that you’ve got accepted a chat rapidly, it begins the interplay off on a optimistic word. In spite of everything, nobody desires to start out a dialog a ticking clock.
Measuring the wait time helps you perceive if it’s essential to supply extra employees to the stay chat queue or in case your present staff is overburdened. In the event you discover that this stay chat metric begins to skyrocket, it could be time to determine methods to start out shifting it again down.
Fixing the problem might seem like offering extra employees, altering how your present staff handles chats, utilizing extra saved replies, and even simply lowering the supply in your chat window.
8. Response time
Response time is the period of time a stay chat person spends ready in your staff to reply. You must solely calculate this rating after your staff has despatched its first response. If you have not replied to your clients but, you should not calculate response instances — that is wait time as an alternative.
When you begin monitoring this metric, it might incentivize poor habits, so be cautious with how a lot emphasis you placed on its significance.
As an illustration, think about one in all your staff members says, “Okay, I will go test on that. I will be again in only a minute.” Then your buyer responds, “Nice, thanks!” It could make your staff member stress unnecessarily about saying one thing again so their response time does not skyrocket.
It’s higher to give attention to the standard of the response relatively than how rapidly it was despatched.
In some circumstances this metric is useful, however it might undoubtedly present unfavorable reinforcement if focused too closely.
9. Period
This metric is the time it takes between a person connecting along with your assist staff and both social gathering ending the chat. Identical to response time, it is one other double-edged sword.
In keeping with Forrester Analysis, 77% of shoppers assume that an important factor an organization can do whereas offering customer support is worth their time. Whereas because of this it is important to take the shopper severely and be certain that you present an in-depth reply to any questions they’ve, it additionally signifies that you won’t need to take 20 minutes to resolve a problem.
In the event you discover that your common period begins to creep up, see should you can determine any developments within the sorts of conversations which are dragging out. Are they primarily with customers in your trials who’re asking quite a lot of presale questions? Have they got extra to do with particular areas of your product?
Use this knowledge as a crumb path to search out the precise problem at hand relatively than as a mirrored image of your stay chat technique.
10. Messages per chat
This metric considers the common variety of messages despatched inside every particular person chat session. Earlier than utilizing this metric as the highest indicator of your staff’s success, take into account the sorts of conversations which have heightened numbers of messages versus people who do not.
Like period and response time, there are numerous explanations for why a chat might have tons of messages. As an illustration, somebody is likely to be new to your product and is not positive about the easiest way to get began. Maybe a buyer is attempting to replace their subscription plan and your pricing web page is a large number.
Relatively than this metric total, take into account segmenting it to grasp extra concerning the trigger of the problem.
Agent-level metrics
After all, whereas most metrics can be on the total or dialog degree, there needs to be a number of that measure particular person agent efficiency. When you can view many of those holistically, they’re additionally vital indicators of particular person efficiency.
11. Buyer satisfaction rating
Buyer satisfaction rating (CSAT) is likely one of the hottest buyer expertise metrics, so it ought to come as no shock that it is on this checklist as nicely. Sometimes, you supply a CSAT survey after an interplay has occurred to gauge how happy the person was with the response they acquired.
Here is an instance of what a CSAT survey may seem like:
CSAT is a useful metric to have as a result of it depicts how your clients obtain your assist reps and offers invaluable details about how new options and product adjustments are affecting them.
12. First contact decision
A protracted-standing common for e mail and cellphone assist metrics, first contact decision (FCR) can be useful as a stay chat metric. It measures whether or not clients want to succeed in again out after a problem has been resolved for additional assist or follow-up.
FCR is essential as a result of, usually, the less instances a buyer has to succeed in out, the extra happy they are going to be with their expertise. Nevertheless, it’s extra significant to have a look at FCR as a product of the complexity and technicality of the problem.
Attempt to phase your tickets based mostly on complexity or matter to grasp the place your FCR could also be affected. Additionally, take into account FCR throughout a number of channels. As an illustration, it could be low on chat (wonderful!) however increased through e mail — in that case, it is time to start thinking about which sorts of conversations come by means of every channel and the place the amount may very well be shifted or deflected.
13. Size of wrap-up
After a assist rep closes a ticket, there’s at all times a bit of labor they need to do afterward to verify every little thing’s tidy. In the event that they escalate the dialog, for example, they have to be positive they’ve added notes, tags, and anything which may be useful for the staff receiving it.
It could be useful to have a look at this metric should you discover that your staff is not getting by means of as many chats as they need to. To calculate this, observe the period of time that it takes in your assist reps to shut one ticket and open up one other.
In the event you begin to discover it getting too lengthy, it could be that it’s essential to automate among the processes and make it even simpler to shut out a ticket or switch it to another person.
14. Use of saved replies
Utilizing saved replies helps save time and create a streamlined course of in your clients. It additionally helps to make sure that you’re at all times matching your model’s tone. Observe the usage of saved replies to grasp how usually your staff makes use of them and which of them they’re utilizing most.
Suppose you discover that your staff makes use of a particular saved reply greater than others. In that case, it could sign {that a} change must happen inside the product or that documentation needs to be written to deflect some conversations away from chat and your inbox.
Equally, should you discover that a few of your assist reps are utilizing tons of saved replies and a few are utilizing none, it is an incredible place to have a dialog.
Possibly these reps aren’t conversant in the saved responses, do not know they exist, or aren’t positive of the very best use-cases for them. In that case, revisiting the method and the intention behind creating and utilizing saved replies might save a while. It could even be that you simply simply haven’t got the saved responses that they might discover useful.
It doesn’t matter what, it is a superb begin to a studying and training dialog.
Use metrics to persistently enhance stay chat
You may’t handle what you do not know. Pulling metrics for crucial features of your stay chat technique helps your staff hold observe of how your stay chat is performing and the way the chats have an effect on clients individually.
Bear in mind, too many metrics will simply trigger a scarcity of focus out of your staff. Discover a number of key metrics that inform the story you are trying to perceive, and give attention to these. That approach, you’ll information your staff’s consideration towards what’s most essential and impactful.
Whereas it may be tempting to pay shut consideration to metrics like period and response time, they’ll additionally mirror numbers that might not be essentially the most related to your staff’s progress. Discover and measure the metrics which are significant to the overarching objectives of your organization and the assist staff inside it.